Building Emotion-Sensitive Robots

Jan. 3 -- The line between man and machine is becoming less distinct as technology evolves.

Researchers at the Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., are working to develop a robot that can respond to human emotions.

Nilanjan Sarkar, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and the principal researcher for the robot project, says the prime motivation is to develop a better, more natural means for machines to interact with humans.

"There is a lot of communication that is implicit between two persons," says Sarkar. "We study each other's faces and body language to see how the other person reacts. 'Are you bored, are you paying attention, are you excited?' "

But to pick up on these human cues, Sarkar proposes taking a different tact from those tried by other robotics researchers. Rather than using cameras to capture visual clues, Sarkar's research focuses on the "physiological aspects" of human expressions.

"For example, if you are excited, your heart beats faster, your palms might get sweaty," says Sarkar.

Signs of Stress

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So Sarkar worked with Craig Smith, an assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt, to figure out how to track and translate those physiological changes.

In their research, Sarkar and Smith outfitted human volunteers with sensors that measured certain biological aspects, including heartbeat, facial muscle movement and hand sweat.

To capture physiological data associated with stress and anxiety, they monitored the volunteers while they played video games. The data was then analyzed and translated into algorithms, or "rules," that could be used by a computer processor.

The digital rules were then placed inside a small, wheeled robot that monitored the volunteers' physiological sensors through wireless links. The autonomous robot roamed the labs but when it "sensed" a certain level of stress from a volunteer, it would return to a predetermined spot and ask if it could be of assistance.

Sarkar says the preliminary concepts and results, reported in last month's Robitica journal, published by Cambridge University Press in England, have been promising. And the research, once fully developed, could lead to interesting uses.